Cultural resistance and negotiation in video game Pamali : Indonesian folklore horror - the tied corpse

Localization of video games makes it easier for players with different language settings to play foreign games. However, a few games customized their game with cultural terms that may confuse the player. This research aimed to examine (1) cultural resistance and negotiation terms, (2) and the subtitling strategy translation on the game Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror - The Tied Corpse by StoryTale Studios. The data sources were extracted from words, phrases, and sentences from the game subtitles in Indonesian and English versions. Document observation was used as the data collection technique, meanwhile content analysis was used as the data analysis technique. Cultural-related term classification data were analyzed using the combined taxonomic theory of cultural-term from (Newmark, 1988; Tomalin and Stempleski, 2013; Zare-Behtash and Firoozkoohi, 2013). Gottlieb’s (1994) subtitle translation strategy was used by the researcher to identifiy the translation process. The result shows six resisted data in three cultural-term categories; Dialect, Ideas; Beliefs. On the other hand, forty-one negotiated data were found in ten cultural-related categories; Ideas; beliefs, Concept; religion, Dialect, Gesture and Habit, Ecology, Idiom, House and Towns, Artefact, Date, and Antrophonym. The Imitation subtitling strategy is found in the resisted data. Meanwhile, the negosiated data applied the Transfer, Transcription, Expansion, Paraphrase, and Deletion subtitling strategy. The negotiation strategy was applied more than the resistance to commercially make the video game accessible to the international player.


INTRODUCTION
Resistance and Negotiation on cultural elements will occur if the translation material has distinctive local cultural elements.Negotiation and resistance are efforts to transfer meaning from cultural-related terms-in Eco (2013) and has been said, translation is always a shift, not between two languages but between two culturesor two bits of knowledge.A translator must consider terms that are not strictly in a form of linguistic but, generally, also cultural.'Negotiation' tends to transfer an ideal meaning that is acceptable to the reader's culture and background.Meanwhile, the opposite is a process of maintaining language identity (Fatin and Cholsy, 2022;Ting-Toomey and Dorjee, 2018).
The translation of cultural elements and translation has been studied (Duman, 2022;Siregar, 2022;Wang and Zhang, 2021).Hojiyeva (2021) and Wikandyani, (2022) also conducted a study on cultural elements in mystical and arts and also how the language was transferred.The language and cultural elements in video games, which act only as a medium of entertainment, are now included in linguistic studies (Bawa, 2018;Horowitz, 2019;Susanti, 2022).Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror is a name of a video game made in Indonesia that included a horror theme with Indonesian myth.
Indonesia has a unique culture, one of which is folklore and horror stories.The culture of horror stories has been raised in the media and made into commercial goods, such as films, books, or games (Khairunnisa & Wardhaningsih, 2020;Noer, 2021).StoryTale Studios is a production house engaged in creating video games seeing opportunities in the popularity of the horror genre in the game market.(Lin et al., 2018;Roberts, 2014).Therefore, in 2018 they managed to create a horror game series entitled Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror.Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror itself is a game that contains gripping horror challenges against the main antagonist Indo-Malay ghosts such as Kuntilanak (The White Lady), Pocong (The Tied Corpse), Tuyul (The Little Devil), and Leak (The Hungry Witch).The contents of the game are inspired by Indonesian folklore which also takes a lot of religious knowledge or public beliefs such as the burial of dead bodies, abstinence from committing obscene acts (taboo), or black magic (Dofari, 2018;Khairunnisa & Wardhaningsih, 2020).
Due to the local horror theme, the developer chose to make their game consisted of cultural knowledge.Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror video game contains cultural-related terms such as "Pocong", "Sompral", "Angker", et cetera.Those words are challenging to be translated in order for the developer to sell their game overseas.Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror video game has been researched by Devi & Nababan, (2022); Fauzhan et al., (2020) ;Taqi, (2022) but with different approaches such as analyzing speech acts, morphemes, and graphic analysis.The example given showed pieces of evidence that there has been previous research related to the translation of terms between cultures, strategies, and video games.Translating game subtitles with local cultural terms with mystical horror themes in Indonesia is a substance that is still being undertaken.Therefore, this research will explore more the modern translation of video game products, aspects of translating cultural words, and how ST to TT resistance and negotiation translation patterns.
According to KBBI 'the (Official Indonesian Dictionary') (2016) negotiation or negosiasi is a process of bargaining to reach a mutual agreement between one party to another.This is in accordance with the Oxford dictionary (2023), which states that "negotiation" is a formal discussion between people who are trying to reach an agreement.On the other hand, resistance in the KBBI means resilience or bertahan.In the Oxford dictionary (2023) it is a dislike of or opposition to a plan, an idea, or the act of refusing to obey.Negotiation in translation has not always been about transferring meaning but also feelings, values, psychological nuances, and implicit judgments.The translation of cultural words that carry local elements will later be translated using the idea of negotiation (Eco, 2013).Meanwhile, resistance according to Frank (2015); Ma'shumah and Sajarwa (2022); Venuti (2008) is a translation that has its nature to be treated as the original source text.This approach results in several target texts (TT) that stand unchanged in their own source text (ST) form.
Resistance and Negotiation are aspects of translation.Translation work can also be done in video games.Translation related to video games has been previously studied by Bernal-Merino (2015).In the book, it was stated that video games are competitive in today's global market.To be more accepted by international markets, adjustments are made to accommodate different national tastes and preferences, this is referred to as 'localization' (Chandler and Deming, 2011;Mangiron, 2018;Mangiron et al., 2006).Localized game theory encountered initial difficulties in gaining recognition in both industry and academia.However, today, the stakes have increased, and part of the game industry relies on global sales and is rapidly moving into the realm of interdisciplinary research in academia.
In order to make a good subtitle from ST to TT, the translator should consider using appropriate equivalence and quality (Amalia, 2022;Nurpermadi et al., 2020;Rahma and Hardjanto, 2022).Subtitle translation is a procedure used to solve problems so that subtitles are easily understood by other nonnative audiences.As an experienced AVT subtitle maker, Gottlieb (1994) formulated several subtitle strategies.There are ten strategies proposed by Gottlieb (1994), as reported in Cronin's (2013) "Translation in the Digital Age" book.Among them are Transfer, Imitation, Transcription, Expansion, Paraphrase, Dislocation, Condensation, Elimination, Decimation, and Resignation.Translation of subtitles from Indonesian to English, such as the Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror game series, aims to make foreign players able to access the game.The cultural words that are translated must be translated properly so that there is no language barrier encountered.
To protect and respect the culture, a cultural expression must be translated with care and rightfully (Ediani & Sajarwa, 2023;Sajarwa et al., 2023).Newmark (1988) states that culture is a means of expression and a distinctive way of life within a community.Culture has roots in a group of people so in translating it, the translator must understand the culture in SL.One way is through the classification of terms that are included in terms related to culture.In this paper, the classification chosen to specify terms related to culture is taken from a combination of three theories.The first classification is taken from the classification put forward by Tomalin and Stempleski, (2013), which defines the term into three main classifications: Product, Ideas, and Behavior.Second, the classification comes from Zare-Behtash and Firoozkoohi, (2013) which sorts cultural-related terms into eleven categories: Anthroponyms, Toponyms, Forms of Entertainment, Means of Transportation, Fictional Characters, Measuring systems, Food and Drinks, Dialects, Costume and Clothes, and Idioms.Third, the classification is taken from Newmark's theory.In his book, adapting Nida's (1977), Newmark (1988) categorizes terms related to cultures such as Ecology, Material Culture, Social culture Gestures, and habits.
Based on the explanation of previous research gaps and theoretical support, this study aimed to deepen more related to the theme of AVT subtitle translation on video games with elements of cultural words embedded.Researchers will identify the types of translation that are negotiated and resistant to the translation of subtitles to the game Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror -The Tied Corpse.Second, the researcher will then identify the process of translating words that contain cultural elements from ST to TT in the subtitles of the game.

METHOD
This research used a descriptive qualitative approach with content analysis as the research design.This research aimed to analyze the cultural resistance and negotiation terms and how the translator translates the terms from Indonesian to English.The research data was a video game entitled Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror.The game was made by the production house of game developer StoryTale Studios from Indonesia and was released on December 28, 2018.The source of the data in this research was the ending synopsis listed in the video game's monolog text and subtitles through the player's interaction with the object around the game.In this research, the researcher used document observation to carefully identify cultural-related terms from the game by the combination of Newmark (1988); Tomalin & Stempleski, (2013); Zare-Behtash & Firoozkoohi, (2013) theory.The researcher applied the content analysis approach which consists of identifying the classification of the cultural-related term, separating the resisted or negotiated data, grouping homogeneous groups, identifying the subtitling strategy according to (Gottlieb, 1994), and drawing description paragraphs.Also, to help the researcher understand the contrast of two languages' data, the researcher used the online Official Indonesian Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary.
This research applied a document observation.To get the data, the researcher had to play Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror -The Tied Corpse DLC (additional content gamers download for video games after their initial release)."The Tied Corpse" is the second episode from four episodes or chapters that the developer released for Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror video game.The game can be purchased on the Steam application and this game is made only for PC or laptop.The subtitle of the game could be obtained in various ways.First, as a player who controls the MC (main character), the MC can interact with the object around him and the object description subtitled will appear on the screen.Second, the subtitle will also pop up from the monologue the MC spoke across the game.Third, the subtitle also appeared as the epilogue that explains the ending the researcher chose to take.The researcher then captured or screenshot the popped-up subtitles.This process is done twice and in different settings, the first is the gameplay with Indonesian language subtitles and the other one is in English subtitles.The researcher needed to make sure the data are the same exact comparison.After the screen-captured data were gathered, the researcher transcribed it into words, phrases, or sentences.The researcher also reduced some data that were not purposely gathered.Those are data that did not contain cultural-related terms and their translated form.
Two subtitles in the form of Indonesian and English will be reviewed with the classification of elements of the cultural terms (Newmark, 1988;Tomalin & Stempleski, 2013;Zare-Behtash & Firoozkoohi, 2013).The subtitle translation strategy used was Gottlieb's (1994) theory.There are two sections of the analysis that separate Resistance and Negotiation data.After classifying the data, the researcher presented the results of the research data analysis using tables and their description below to elaborate on the subtitling translation strategy.The tables are set from the highest numbers of trends and tendencies percentages of the classification.

Resistance of the cultural-related term classification and the translation strategy
Table 1, Table 2, and Table 3 explain each classification of the resisted process to the culturalrelated terms such as Dialect, Ideas; Beliefs, and Date.Then, Figure 1 shows the percentage of those cultural-related terms in the resistance data.Each of the tables will have a description to elaborate on the subtitling strategy that the translator chose to translate the cultural-related term.A complete showcase of the analysis is explained as follows: There are three data showing the resistance of ST to TT translation in the dialect category.(1) shows the unchanged word "sompral", (2) shows the unchanged phrase "Mang Ujang", and (3) the word "Pamali" does not undergo a translation process either.The data are included in the Dialect category because they contain cultural elements, the Sundanese culture used by game developers.All data use the Translation subtitling strategy "Imitation".Table 2 shows the resisted data at the "Ideas; Beliefs".(1) shows the unchanged word "Pocong".However, (2) shows the developer's decision to use English therefore it does not have to be translated.The data are "Ideas; Beliefs" in which both emphasize "pocong", a type of supernatural horror which is believed by Malay-Indonesian culture.Every datum in the table applied the "Imitation" translation subtitling strategy.Table 3 shows cultural related-term to "Date" classification.(1) shows the unchanged phrase with the "Imitation" subtitling strategy of "Kliwon Suro".The game developer chose to insert another local Indonesian heritage by using a Javanese cultural term; the Javanese calendar system.

Negotiation of the cultural-related term classification and the translation strategy
Table 4 to Table 12 explain each classification of the negotiated process to the cultural-related terms such as Ideas; Beliefs, Dialect, Gesture and Habit, Ecology, Idiom, House and Towns, Artefact, Date, Antrophonym.Next, Figure 2 shows the percentage of those cultural-related terms in the negotiation data.Each of the tables will have a description to elaborate on the subtitling strategy that the translator chose to translate the cultural-related term.A complete showcase of the analysis is explained as follows: Table 4 shows the negotiating process of the translator shifting several "Ideas; beliefs" in the subtitle.( 1) -( 6) have a "Transfer" process by which the translator chose to translate the data with their exact meaning in ST. ( 7) -( 9), the data shows that the translation process applied the "Transcription" process.It means the translator tried to pick the closest equivalence of the ST word.Meanwhile, in (10) the process of "Deletion" happens when the word "Papan kuburan" is shortened to "Board" only.

Hati-hati euy, ini sumur angker, pasti ada hantunya
This has to be the sacred well, they say there's a ghost there

Deletion
Table 5 shows the negotiation process in the "Dialect" term found in the game.( 1) -(4) apply the "Transcription" translation process, the translator picks the closest word from ST to TT. ( 5) and ( 6) have "Deletion" as the translation process, the words in their Sundanese ST are eliminated in the TT.The ST in the table is from the Sundanese language.

Get the F**k out Expansion
Table 6 shows the negotiated term "Gesture and habit".( 1) -( 2) apply the "Transfer" strategy, The ST is translated as equivalence as possible to their TT.Meanwhile, (3) -( 5) in the table show that the translator uses the "Expansion" strategy to elaborate the word in ST more.It is done to emphasize the meaning of the word and to make it sounds comprehensive.( 5) shows that the translator puts a context to the player to leave the scary place.Table 7 shows the negotiation process in "Ecology".The name of flowers in ST, Indonesian, is translated with "Transfer" strategy.The words are translated with the exact correct equivalence in TT, English.

Ia membutuhkan pekerjaan lebih dari apapun karena ia adalah tulang punggung keluarga
He needs a job more than anything because Cecep is the breadwinner in the family.

Transfer
In table 8, the Idioms in ST, Indonesian language, are translated with the equivalent idiom in TT, English.The process of negotiation happened and used the "Transfer" strategy as their subtitling strategy.Table 9 shows the word "masjid" is translated to "mosque" with a "Transfer" strategy.Table 10 shows the word "jimat" is translated to "talisman" with a "Transfer" strategy.Table 11 shows the word "malam jumat" is translated to "Friday night" with a "Transfer" strategy.Table 12 shows the word "eneng" with its closest meaning to "my girlfriend" by "Transcription" strategy.The game developer was heavily commended to translate their game subtitles, therefore, they can be sold in the international market.English was chosen to be the TT because it will reach more audiences as the demographic of gamers should or at least understand English (Bernal-Merino, 2015;Touiserkani, 2015).Negotiation and Resistance in translating ST to TT in a different language and cultural background are important to enable the players to understand the context or plot of the game.Subtitles in video games aimed to make it easier for players to explore games (Mangiron et al., 2006) Aside from language bilingual mastering, translators need to have a strong ST and TT cultural background in order to establish good intercultural communication (Köksal & Yürük, 2020).
Negotiations on translation are the necessary effort in order to create ST products of translation that sounded more equivalent.Due to some hard-to-understand words; the translator will adjust the closest word meaning or stay to the source.(Croitoru, 2008;Ma'shumah & Sajarwa, 2022b;Wikandyani, 2022).From the data, a word such as "keranda" from Indonesian ST was translated to "coffin" (Negotiation cultural belief, datum 7).The word was transferred although the weight of ST is not delivered well."Keranda" implied an ironic funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation."Keranda" is a tool that helps people bring a dead body that is ready to bury and is mostly utilized in the Islamic burial process and "coffin" does not resemble the right description.Another example is the word "pocong"."Pocong" is the entity that haunts players in the game and represents a big Indonesian horror culture embedded (Khairunnisa & Wardhaningsih, 2020).In several phrases, the ghost "pocong" was translated as the "ghost", "entity", or even "the tied corpse" which has a closer meaning (hantu ikat/mayat ikat).On some occasions, the translator only borrowed the word and not translated it at all.
The most cultural-related term found in the result is based on religion and beliefs.Indonesian horror stories or urban legends consist of many religious terms, especially Islam (Dofari, 2018;Khairunnisa & Wardhaningsih, 2020).The developer took myth and horror to sell their game as it is more promising and trendier.(Lin et al., 2018;Roberts, 2014;Trattner, 2020).Therefore, the subtitles are mostly centered and frequently insert cultural-word with a horror theme.These affect how the translation of subtitling as well, many vocabularies that were tied to cultural terms are translated to TT and it must be comprehensive to international players.The most subtitling translation strategy found is Transfer and Transcription which was mentioned by Gottlieb (1994).Transfer and Transcription are ways to translate ST to TT with the exact equivalence of the closest meaning.The amount of data on negotiations is found more than resistance.The process was done in order to minimize foreign concepts to the international players.Audiovisual translations are now reaching the videogame sector too.(Mangiron et al., 2006).Audiovisual translations are equipped to localize the foreign game term.(Chandler & Deming, 2011;Mangiron, 2018;Jimenez-Crespo, 2013).In this case, the Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror developer adapted their subtitle and translated it (Taqi, 2022).Touiserkani, (2015) also examined adaptation of swear words in the ST of Half-Life2 video game, which underwent a lot of negotiation on swearing words in its subtitle so that the middle-easterner players who politically identified as Muslims with their norms could accept the game.Thus, in the Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror game elements of cultural words in the game are made as domestic as possible with the general terms that exist in English-speaking settings.The translation results with domestication negotiations are in accordance with the writing and cultural traditions in TT.The international players will not understand "pocong" without its context being "a tied corpse".Therefore, the translator determines what is needed so that the translation is not perceived as foreign work by the reader or feels alienated.(Venuti, 2017).
Meanwhile, the resistance of the words translated from ST to TT did not experience any changes.The translation process used is Imitation, in which the words are directly borrowed without any alteration.However, the borrowing of ST words did not come from Indonesian but from Sundanese and Javanese.The Sundanese and Javanese languages used in the subtitles do not experience changes in English.For example, Laporan Sompral is a phrase combined from Laporan (Indonesian) and sompral (Sundanese) which means naughty or dishonorable.When translated, only ST from Indonesian is altered.Therefore, the TT is shown as a combination of the words Report (English) and sompral (Sundanese).Resistance also persists because of cultural identity and deixis.For example, "Mang Ujang" is the name of a fictional character in the story.The naming indicates that he is someone from the Sundanese tribe.The word "mang" in Sundanese culture refers to calling an older man in a polite way.This datum does not translate and is being kept by the translator in English as "Mang Ujang" and not "Mr.Ujang" or any other equivalent.Another example is the word Kliwon Suro, which is in the Javanese language, still translated as the same as the source.The Javanese calendar is the result of the development of archipelago culture towards the implementation of Islamic values in Indonesia (Dofari, 2018).
The main theme of the game which combines religion and beliefs affects the game localization.The main villain of the Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror episode 2 is "Pocong" (The Tied Corpse).In a Muslim tradition, a dead body should be wrapped by a shroud and tied in several areas.However, before the corpse is buried in soil, it must be untied first (Khairunnisa & Wardhaningsih, 2020).The Gamemaker, therefore, took this concept to make their game.The developer's intention to keep several words authentic is to justify the cultural aspect of the game and bolded the horror and myths terms.(Taqi, 2022;Trattner, 2020).Consequently, the narrative that the writer of this game made will revolve around religion and beliefs in Malay-Indonesian culture, making the game too local and requiring a heavy negotiation subtitling process.

CONCLUSION
The findings show that there are many processes of negotiating religious culture (concept; religious terms) and terms of belief (ideas; beliefs) with strategies of subtitling mostly Transcription and Transfer at the negotiation level.The use of negotiations on Indonesian Source text to English Target Text is carried out to transfer the meaning with the same equivalent in English.The intention was to localize the game to non-native Indonesian and make the international players understand the game.The pattern of resistance used in the game translation is used to maintain the language and local dialect terms in Javanese and Sundanese.The two languages remain unchanged because their equivalents will not be the same in English and in order to maintain the aesthetic elements of horror, mystery, and sociocultural identity.The pattern found in resistance and negotiation in the game Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror: The Tied Corpse is mostly found at the level of beliefs and religious terms because the theme of the game story tells about the process of burial of dead bodies in Islam.
The limitation of this research lies in the focus which is only given to the classification of the types of cultural words and how they are translated.Second, in terms of borrowing ST to TT this research only covers the choice of Indonesian to the English language.Third, the object of this study is the video game Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror with a single episode, the second chapter as the material.Future researchers are expected to be able to elaborate more on research related to resistance and negotiation in terms of subtitle objects or themes in the context of horror culture and Indonesian stories mixed with variations into English.In linguistics as well, researchers can break down related research at the level of descriptive and equivalence.Therefore, there will be more findings that explain Audio Visual Translation in games and how subtitles are negotiated and resisted according to game marketing targets and enrich translation on the localized video game.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Percentage of Resisted classification of the cultural-related term

Figure 2 .Figure 3 .
Figure 2. Percentage of Negotiated classification of the cultural-related term

Table 12 . Negotiated "Antrophonym" cultural-related term No
Source Text (ST) Target Text (TT) Translation subtitling strategy 1 Ajak nikah si eneng ah I'll ask my girlfriend to marry me Transcription